Making music artwork. Alternatives to Adobe?

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Spring Goose wrote: Wed Apr 14, 2021 1:12 am Wow brilliant, thank you very much.
You're welcome!
Fugue State Audio - plugins, samples, etc.
Support the Union of Musicians and Allied Workers

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elxsound wrote: Wed Apr 14, 2021 4:02 am Spring Goose, check this out: https://www.canva.com

I have not used it before, but it looks pretty flexible with lots of templates to customize.
I hadn't seen that one before so gave it a quick look; definitely seen some of their sample album covers on Bandcamp releases. :)

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free Fotosketcher - not a full featured painting app,but you can convert photos to painting. https://fotosketcher.com/fotosketcher-gallery/

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Another +1 for Affinity.

Note that you will have to adapt to its workflow though, and you will have to learn the apps, as they're quite a bit different than Photoshop, or other picture editing software.

Holds true for anything else as well though, of course.

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Thanks everybody

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OK so far i've installed Gimp and the 3 month trial version of Affinity Publisher, and i am pleased with the results. I'm gonna try Affinity Designer tomorrow although tbh i don't know where i'll start. I've already decided that i'll definitely be buying Affinity Publisher.

Thankyou very much everybody for your help and recommendations. :D

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As I'm in the same situation as the OP, I also downloaded the Affinity trials and will install them shortly.

If I understand correctly, Designer is for drawing stuff and Photo for editing existing pictures. But what does Publisher do?

And how friendly are these tools to a user with ~0 experience? Activation is only serial + email, even for offline machines? Also, is this 50% off sale frequent or should I act fast before it's gone?

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e@rs wrote: Thu Apr 15, 2021 9:47 am If I understand correctly, Designer is for drawing stuff and Photo for editing existing pictures. But what does Publisher do?
It's for designing pages with graphical elements -- think magazines, flyers, brochures, etc.
e@rs wrote: Thu Apr 15, 2021 9:47 am And how friendly are these tools to a user with ~0 experience?
I've you're making music on a computer, you should be fine. ;) There's built-in help and a friendly forum, if you need it.
e@rs wrote: Thu Apr 15, 2021 9:47 am Activation is only serial + email, even for offline machines?
Yes, as far as I know, but I haven't tested it.
e@rs wrote: Thu Apr 15, 2021 9:47 am Also, is this 50% off sale frequent or should I act fast before it's gone?
Once or twice a year, I think. When this sale ends, I wouldn't expect to see another until the end of year around the holidays.

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Thank you for answering my questions, telecharge!


Unfortunately I can't install the freakin' softwares: all I get is a window with the name of the program, a minimize and a close button; no error message, nothing. At least on the other machine, it said 'no fun for you, x64 CPU needed'.

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Yes, Publisher is a desktop publishing software. Regarding the ease of use of the software: I would say slightly more difficult than the Adobe apps, but, you can definitely learn them.

About your error: No idea. Which computer are you trying to run it on? Sounds like there might be an issue with your graphics card.

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Never used Adobe so...

It's an older machine (2008) I usually test software on. Win7 x64 with an 8800GTS GPU with 640MB of memory. Could it be that I didn't have Aero enabled?

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Gimp is the most commonly used photoshop alternative.
And it's open source.
Inkscape allows working with vector art much like Illustrator. Again, free
Krita. This is an amazing program. It rivals Painter et al and it is totally free. You can also make animation with it. I use it a lot.
If you are looking to spend money then maybe look at Paintshop Pro. It's very similar to Photoshop but muc cheaper.
All that being said,I couldn't live without my beloved Photoshop. ( I reckon you could pick up older versions on something like eBay for little cost).

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e@rs wrote: Thu Apr 15, 2021 9:47 am If I understand correctly, Designer is for drawing stuff and Photo for editing existing pictures. But what does Publisher do?
Publisher is a layout program for making books, pamphlets, magazines. Adobe's version is called inDesign.

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Not that I want to start another discussion about that, but, I'd recommend Affinity Photo for 28 € a thousand times, before I'd recommend GIMP. No competition IMO.

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e@rs wrote: Thu Apr 15, 2021 7:13 pm Never used Adobe so...

It's an older machine (2008) I usually test software on. Win7 x64 with an 8800GTS GPU with 640MB of memory. Could it be that I didn't have Aero enabled?
Maybe you need to "Run as Administrator..." (right-click option)? Been a while since I've worked with Windows 7, but I remember that being necessary sometimes.

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